Anyone who’s been there, knows someone who’s been there or was aware of Bell Canada’s work with Clara Hughes and others will understand that it is just not that easy.

I started on medication after some time trying alternative therapies, herbs and just trying to suck it up (really it doesn’t work — if someone is feeling down, don’t tell them to suck it up, it really doesn’t help!!!).

I love my family doctor. He is kind and generous and funny, and we have a great working relationship. When I appeared in emerg, again, on July 1, 2009, and he said “What is it now?!”, I was not even remotely offended. He had that twinkle in his eye that meant it was time to really get to the bottom of things and come to terms with what I was going to have to do next.

Don’t get me wrong, he did all the right “medical” tests to make sure that I really wasn’t having a heart attack and that my lungs really were working fine. But then, when I appeared at his office to discuss the results (healthy as a horse), he said I needed to decide what to do. He knows that I’m not big on medication, so he suggested that I try St. John’s Wort and then he sent me off to a psychiatrist at our local hospital. (Royal Victoria Hospital here in Barrie, Ontario, is a fantastic place. My family and I have never had anything but fantastic care there.) I eventually, even with the support of my Naturopathic Doctor, decided it was time for a little chemical brain manipulation (please don’t think I take this lightly — I just tend to deal with life with a little off-handed humour).

Well, it is now two years later and I am off my medication. Admittedly, it is sort of by mistake (I forgot to grab my meds when we left for the cottage and was not going to turn around and come back for them), but here I am five days drug free (really, do not just stop — it is dumb). Thankfully, I have had no side effects of going off my medication kind of cold turkey (I was in a transition from one medication to another and thus was not at max dose on either).

I am, however, beginning to suffer again. I couldn’t care less…about anything. I can still plug away at my work, and I can usually rally enough guilt to get a reasonable meal on the table at dinner time, even when the depression is pretty bad. From an anxiety perspective, I learned mindfulness meditation and cognitive behavioural therapy in the year after I was first diagnosed, so, though I am definitely out of practice (I should never have stopped meditating regularly, since it is a support system that I can take with me anywhere I go), I can generally talk myself down and get my breathing under control.

Now what? I am reconnecting with a counsellor I met when we first moved to Barrie in 2005 and who I really liked at the time. She uses a technique called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), among others, and I am really interested to experience it. I heard about it from Gerry Fostaty (who wrote As You Were, a great book), who suffers from PTSD.

Since I have started this discussion here finally, I will continue as things progress. Maybe my experience can help someone else.

Being depressed or anxious is not embarrassing. There are a million causes, a million reasons and a huge variety of ways to deal with it. I don’t ever want to wallow in this challenge in my life (I have a ton of things to do and great people to share time and life with), but I also refuse to hide in the closet.

Back to editing for a bit (to my clients, I really am still working away). And then a healthy lunch and maybe a walk or a swim.

I’m in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, so though we are getting lots of hot weather with no rain in sight, it is not nearly as bad here as in parts of the United States. And, the drought in Africa is heart breaking.

This morning I went down to the beach (I am soooo lucky to have water nearby) and it was fantastic to float in the water with my friends and get a little exercise without frying.

Take care, drink lots of water, find a cool place to hang out and make the best of the hot weather. Here in Canada, soon enough we will be complaining of the cold and the snow. Be safe!

Today I saw the best real estate sign ever: “Too late”. Not only was this house sold, if you weren’t the one to buy it, you were too late to the game. I hope I see such signs again. Made me smile at the cockiness of the agent.

I note that I am not the one who caught this slip up, the proofreader did. This is why we hire proofreaders who are not the editor: I would never have seen it on the proofread either.

Temporairement hors service / Temporarily out of service

Not sure how a mailbox can be out of service. Maybe “Service temporairement suspendu/
Service temporarily suspended” would have been a more logical statement.

For those of us who are used to receiving payment for our services through Canada Post, this has been a pain, but soon I will be forced to find another way to get paid. Sadly for Canada Post, many of those payment methods are more direct and much faster so I will likely depend on the company less and less.

I’ll see if I can find the same thing and take a picture.

What is the origin of the expression “one day at a time”? I did a little research and found that the concept is most often associated with 12-step programs, in particular Alcholics Anonymous. The portion of the Serenity Prayer that is most said is as follows:

GOD, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

However, the full prayer includes “one day at a time”:

GOD, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen
– Reinhold Neibuhr-1926

Though I am not a hugely religious person, I love this prayer now that I have learned more about it. Life is so much easier when you do what needs to be done in the moment and don’t fret about what you can’t affect.

My blogging has been particularly sporadic lately, but I intend for that to change as meetings and travelling come to an end for the summer at least.

All the best to clients, colleagues, friends and family over the summer months. I hope that I can entertain and educate you as the season progresses.

Sheila

There was a time when some amount of capitalization in headings was expected, but that is no longer the case. Even when capitalization was most common, which words to capitalize was not consistent from one organization to another, one style guide to another. Some common options, which were noted in an article on the Technical Communicators’ Forum (http://www.tc-forum.org/topicmai/ml03capi.htm — a forum no longer edited after 2000), are:

Capitals For Everything In The Title
Capitals only for Nouns in the Title (‘German method’)
Capitals only for the first word in the title
Capitals for Longer Words in the Title (>3 Letters)

In my opinion, capitalization of headings comes down to tone and design. A contemporary design that incorporates colour and more than one font can easily support sentence-case headings (only the first word capitalized other than proper nouns). The headings can be made to stand out using features other than just capitalization. A much older style layout would look odd with sentence-case headings. I also believe that most people would find sentence-case headings odd in more formal documents.

Ultimately the decision to capitalize headings or not needs to factor in the audience, the nature of the document and the nature of the organization publishing the information — as always.

” It is well established that if a treatment has no chance of achieving its intended benefit (e.g., performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a body whose head has been severed as a result of trauma), it need not be offered.”

TERMIUM, the Government of Canada’s terminology and linguistic data bank, is a fantastic language tool for finding just the right word, using the correct government standards if that’s what is required and finding translations, among other great tools

http://btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/site/termium.php?lang=eng&cont=001

Peck’s English Pointers is a fun series of articles about various elements of the English language (grouped into grammar, punctuation, usage and clarity) along with self-tests associated with each article.

http://btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/site/termium.php?lang=eng&cont=055